MBT's

[DRG]

The AI chooses units from a picklist and it only picks from ONE picklist.

The " Allied" / "Captured" feature is for human use only so is of no use to the AI when it chooses units

So.....the USMC has US Army assets available to USMC starting 7/2021 primarily for the AI to use. The > 7/2021 formations COULD HAVE been " renationalized" so the human player would not see them in the game but the AI would see them but then we would have to explain over and over why there are no tanks to select in USMC > 7/21.

Players preferring to see the US ID tag for armour units >7 /21 are encouraged to use the ALLIES function and then their Marines will have properly ID's US Army tanks but that is not an option for the AI

Doing it the way it was done simplified matters ( K.I.S.S.). In RL the USMC can request US Army armour support if the mission requires armour and that's what we have but they will be tagged USMC UNLESS the human player buys for the USMC and uses the Allied button to buy armour > 7/21

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

To be truthful forgot about AI, however, would think the ABRAMS SEP 2 the much more realistic tank option here.

I rechecked the ARMY.MIL website and still no press releases in a longtime about M1A2C with NONE announcing FOC unlike when they did so for the M1A2 SEP 2 which drove my submission for that tank.

Plenty about ABRAMS for foreign sales/donations though.

Will need to push it (M1A2C) to the right again.

Regards,
Pat

[Mobhack]

The MBT game uses a data driven pick list, unlike the WW2 one which does it all in large lumps of pick code. That was done for flexibility, but in retrospect not an approach i would do again.

The code driven approach in WW2 allows me to use a "PickAliedNation (formationID)" function wot I rote, say for UK planes if it was an ANZAC pick V Italy in the desert. So the air support (and maybe armour too) - might have UK ID tags, UK leader names and values etc. should you have ID tags on and look at them.

But the data driven model (the dat files are put together in spreadsheets then the numbers extracted by column to dat files) - was not really conducive to a "PickAllied()" function. Every formationID column in the spreadsheet would have needed an extra column for foreign OOB ID, at the very least. And then you would have had to select 2 columns to extract and port to the DAT file, and the wrangling of that picklist data and the umpty-five pick files per OOB is already bad enough! - Yep, the "flexibility" that the approach seemed to offer - really wasn't in retrospect. If I did it again, loads of embedded C code wins out!

I think only 2 OOB designers of ours ever really tried editing picklists, and Suhir has been the main such for the USMC - and it was a real task for them to get thier heads around. Yep, once again, dedicated code for the win, not databases!